There could be a lot of potentially great news here for fans of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Last we heard about the project, it had acquired the services of Michael Bay‘s Platinum Dunes — makers of horror remakes like Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and A Nightmare on Elm Street — to produce the new live-action/computer animated flick.

That announcement was a few months ago, and next up comes the reveal of writers for the project. Reports are that Art Marcum and Matt Holloway have reached a near $1 million deal to craft the new Ninja Turtles script.

We won’t know for a while how this movie will play out — it could be a surprise treat, or it could be a massive disaster — but Marcum and Holloway seem like a promising pair. The team helped write the script for Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, and they also wrote the script for Punisher: War Zone, which wasn’t quite as popular, but was a little more faithful to the comics than previous offerings.

What’s even more exciting is that sources close to the project say that executives at Paramount have this movie on the fast-track, and that they want a first draft by October so they can find their director and get things in motion for a 2012 release bubble. The source also shares that this isn’t something Paramount is looking to do just one movie with; the hopes are that this will be their “next huge franchise, like Transformers.”

That will all depend on box office success of course, but now you know: when this brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie comes around, if you all see it and see it often, you’re likely looking at a couple sequels in the future.

[Source: Deadline]